Film Reviews

Heli is likely to be one of the most powerful films you'll see 2014. Considering that 12 Years a Slave was released earlier in the year (in the UK at least), that is saying something. The film takes a close up look at a small family caught up in the inexorable violence of Mexico's current drug war.
It...

A Touch of Sin is the latest film from award-winning Chinese director Jia Zhangke, who’s most well-known film, Still Life, won the Golden Lion at the 63rd Venice Film Festival. Last year A Touch of Sin also won Best Screenplay at Cannes.
The filmmaker's latest feature, after the success of 24 City...

Following on from the classic tale The Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum, Signature Entertainment have brought to life a feature-length musical animated adventure that gets off to a shaky start, but ultimately won this reviewer over. Want to know what happened after Dorothy Gale returned to Kansas? You'll find out in...

The conquest Mount Everest by Tenzing Norgay and Edmund Hillary is probably the best known mountaineering event of all time. Still, most of us are probably ignorant about the ice-encrusted details of that historic event. Kiwi director Leanne Pooley's film Beyond the Edge reveals exactly what was...

Arrow Films have released Godfrey Reggio's first two classic films Koyaanisqatsi and Powaqqatsi together on Blu Ray for the first time. Gorgeous-looking films such as these could well be what the format was invented for.
In characteristic Arrow style, the release comes with a wealth of extras. These...

The word ‘epic’ is bandied around an awful lot these days, both inside and outside the cinema. The entire Expendables franchise thus far – epic! Journey’s Don’t Stop Believin’ – epic! Danny Dyer in East Enders – epic! Displaced from its roots, the very nature of a cinematic ‘epic’ has lost its...

The BBC recently announced it was going to remake An Inspector Calls. It's unlikely that the remake will be able to match the power of the original screen adaptation. Certainly not if their latest version of Jamaica Inn is anything to go by.
It is strange to think that in the Swinging Sixties, An...

It's a sad fact about sport that there have to be losers. The good news is that it's the taking part that counts. Or so we tell ourselves. The unbelievably moving Next Goal Wins follows a football team that learns this lesson the hard way.
Some teams have to contend with a lot more losing than others...

Just last week the 10th anniversary of the noughties teen movie, Mean Girls, was celebrated all over social media to the annoyance of those who despise the genre. So it seems fairly fitting that We Are The Freaks, the surreal and anarchic anti-teen British comedy is released on DVD shortly after. Unlike your...

Hirokazu Koreeda’s latest film can be summarised simply: beautifully shot, a little bit implausible, but emotionally interesting. Maybe there is something in this brief description that echoes its theme – the nature of paternal love – the seemingly under-explored counterpoint to the more familiar study of...